What is the name of flashlight-looking non-lethal weapon in Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor?
Are you sure such a device really exists? IIRC, Clancy’s stun gun was just the mother of all strobelights. I have seen demo videos of green laser-based dazzle sticks but never anything like what was in Debt of Honr.
That would be the Mark 3 Plot Device. 
The idea of using bright lights to stun opponents and cause permanent short-term retrograde amnesia is an old one; Clancy has used it, the 1981 movie “Looker” used it, it’s the same thing as MiB’s neuralizer, and some science fiction books have called it a “Bester grenade.” That last leads me to believe that the idea was explored at some point by writer Alfred Bester, but I haven’t seen such a work, and I can’t find any reference to the concept.
Vaguely along these lines, there’s recently been a flashlight introduced that has a “strobe” mode where the light emits a bright flashing light that’s designed to disorient the target.
IIRC, it showed clips of a particular Japanese children’s cartoon…
It’s just a high-powered flashlight with an extremely good parabolic (or somesuch) reflector behind the lens that focuses the light very well. I don’t recall it being a strobe light in Clancy’s book. I don’t know if there needs to be a new name for it.
Nametag, IIRC, it didn’t induce amnesia, it “overloaded the optic nerve”, basically like giving you a knockout blow to the eyeball.
What exactly did this device do? I haven’t seen the movie. Is it possible the device was just a very bright tactical flashlight. Surefire’s M6 produces 500 lumens of perfectly focused light. Shining that into someone’s eyes will give a “knock out blow to the eyeball.”
I vaugely recall it being described as something like 50 million candlepower.
It’s been a while since I read the book, but ISTR that it was some sort of strobed laser, though it could have been another sort of strobe. IIRC, it was green light? I saw a web page that showed what may heve been the device, but I don’t remember the name of it. The text described effects similar to what Clancy wrote, though IIRC the effect was only similar and not exact.
My wife and I carry halogen tactical flashlights when out at night, specifically Surefire defender models. These lights are 60 lumens and more than enough to do the job. The beam is bright enough that I cannot look into it and keep my eyes open even in daylight. The 500 lumen light Bear_Nenno mentions would be ridiculous overkill at short range. It is by no means a weapon, I’ve never had a problem with it in my carry on luggeage when I fly, but can be exremely effective at disorienting a and temporarily blinding someone and encouraging them to flee.
From “The Demolished Man”. Specifically, "This informality enabled Reich to drift into the Restricted Room and pick up one of the visual knockout capsules. They were cubes of copper, half the size of fulminating caps, but twice as deadly. When they were broken open, they erupted a dazzling blue flare that ionized the Rhodopsin—the visual purple in the retina of the eye—blinding the victim and abolishing his perception of time and space. "
In Debt of Honour, the range was quite long - they were targetting a landing aircraft, so the range could easily be half a mile or more.
If that is the case it would almost certainly have to be a laser as it may not be possible to focus ordinary light tightly enough.
Lumens isn’t a measure of brightness really, it’s a measure of how much total light is made by a lamp. The brightness on any spot will depend of course on the efficiency of the reflector and distance due to our old pal the law of inverse squares. If I can find my light meter I’ll try to calculate brightness in a more relavent way.
The pilots of the aircraft weren’t knocked out, though, only blinded. The “light” only knocked people out at a range of a few metres, as I recall.
It was used in two situations: capturing the Somali (?) warlord at the start of the book (at close range), and flashing the pilots.
It was also used to disable the guards holding Koga.
I only remember the warlord thing at the beginning.
If this is what Clancy was writing about, it’s called the Laser Dazzler.
I want one!!!